SITE IN DEVELOPMENT


WELCOME AND THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE WHILE THE SITE IS IN DEVELOPMENT.

I'VE BEEN AWAY FROM THE SITE FOR A WHILE BUT HAVE BEEN BUSY IN THE BACKGROUND. HAVE A LOT OF INFORMATION TO ADD WHICH SHOULD HAPPEN QUICKLY AS I HAVE THE INFORMATION READY TO COPY AND PASTE IN.

PLEASE READ TO THE VERY END OF THIS PAGE FOR IMPORTANT INFORMATION . 

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE


THERE IT IS..........

Our world, our home.

Home to 7.3 Billion People and 1.2 million documented and estimated 12.8 million other species.

It's safe to say that all of us have seen the above image. 

Known as "the Blue Marble(1, 2, 3) it was taken on December 7th 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 45,000 km (28,000 mi) on the way to the Moon.

It is one of the most iconic, and among the most widely distributed images in human history.

Apollo 17 was the final mission to the Moon.

With the sun behind them and being on just the right trajectory the crew were lucky enough to be the only 3 out of 24 men that went to the Moon to see the Earth almost fully illuminated. (Slightly gibbous on the bottom right)

The Blue Marble was the only NASA image taken of the Earth like this for quite some time. 


Before the Blue Marble people could only imagine what the Earth really looked like.

Below are some Artist Impressions prior to 1972.


NASA released the below image of our home on July 6th 2015. 


The image, known as the "EPIC View of Earth" was taken by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) ( 1 ) which is aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) at a distance of one Million miles away . The image is a combination of 3 separate images (red, green and blue channels from EPIC's available 10) taken by a 4 megapixel CCD camera ( 1 , 2 ) and telescope with a final resolution between 10 km (6.2 mi) and 35 km (21.7 mi) per pixel. ( 1 , 2 )

It was the first image provided by NASA of the Earth in full sunlight in almost 43 years.

A series of corrections were applied before this image was obtained. The major corrections are for “flat‐fielding” and stray light.

“Flat-fielding” is based on measurements with a uniform light source to measure the differences in sensitivity for each of the 4 million pixels. The resulting correction map is applied to the measure counts from the CCD. 

Stray light is measured in the laboratory using a series of small diameter light sources. The illumination of pixels outside the main diameter of the light source was measured to produce a detailed matrix map of the entire stray light function (the effect of light directed at each pixel affecting every other pixel). The stray light correction is applied to every image. Other corrections are also applied based on laboratory measurements. ( 1 )


DSCOVR sits at a Lagrange point known as Lagrange-1 or L-1 ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) which is a position in space that is just the right distance so the Earth and Suns gravitational pull "cancel out" and allow the satellite to orbit with fewer corrections than satellites in other positions.

This allows a greater operational life due to reduced fuel requirements and also provides a unique position to perform observation and monitoring of the Sun, Earth and Moon.


Because the sun is always behind DSCOVR we will now have a fully illuminated view of Earth at all times.

DSCOVR has also produced an animation showing the "dark side of the moon" as it transited the Earth.

You can watch the Transit animation below.

 If you experience issues playing videos direct from this page you can click the blue link above any of them like here or on many occasions I have included the original file below it so you can download your own.

You can also read about the DSCOVR transit animation here.

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Truly amazing !!!!!!!! 

I had seen a video showing Earths rotation many years ago but nothing like the one from EPIC.

Look at the detail compared to the rotation captured by the Galileo spacecraft ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) in December 1990 as it rocketed away from Earth on its way to Jupiter.

I found a few versions at NASA's Scientific Visualization studio (SVS)

The video below is at 600 x real speed. The timer indicates the hours and minutes that have passed. 

You can see the original (and download your own) here or can find all of them here.

Its incredible to see our home in motion but it showed less than 6 hours of rotation.

After some searching I found the below video at SVS which shows a full 24 hr period of rotation also using images from Galileo.


I have a huge interest in Science and Space. I watch and read as much as possible.

A few months ago I saw a 92y talk called "Blackholes and other cosmic quandaries" which had NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich interviewing Astrophysicist, Cosmologist and Author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The subjects were very informative but one thing that amazed me was what he had to say about the shape of our home.

Watch the short clip below or the full interview can be seen by clicking here

Describing the Earth as an "Oblate Sphere" or "Pear shaped" was not something I had heard until I saw that video.


He didn't really mention any dimensions so I though I'd search for them. 

I found a few resources that mentioned Earths diameter.

Wikipedia said that the shape of Earth is an oblate spheroid which is flattened along the axis from pole to pole due to the its rotation which caused the diameter at the equator to be 43 km (27 mi) larger than the pole to pole diameter. 

Space.com called Earth an oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of 12,756 km (7,926 mi) and a polar diameter of 12,720 km (7,900 mi), a difference of 64 km (40 mi)

Universe Today said the equatorial diameter is 12,756 km and its polar diameter is 12,713 km, a difference of 43 km. 

Regents prep again called Earth an oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of  12,756 km and a polar diameter of 12,714 km or a difference of 42 km


While they had slightly different measurements (and I have to question space.coms math, I would say a difference of 36 km or 26 mi) all agreed Earth is oblate.


But there was no mention of it being "Pear shaped".

I found on Wikipedia's Figure of Earth article that geodetic networks and satellite geodesy ( 1 ) are used to measure Earths shape.


The article says because Earth is flattened at the Poles and bulges at the equator geodesy represents the Earths shape as an oblate spheroid.

The oblate spheroid or oblate ellipsoid, is an ellipsoid of revolution obtained by rotating an ellipse about its shorter axis.

A Spheroid describing the figure of Earth or other celestial body is called a reference ellipsoid.

 Many reference ellipsoids have been developed over the centuries from many different survey methods. The flattening value varies slightly from one reference ellipsoid to another, reflecting local conditions and whether the reference ellipsoid is intended to model the entire Earth or just a portion of it.

On the same article under more complicated shapes it says the possibility of the Earths equator being an ellipsoid rather than a circle has been a matter of scientific controversy for a century ( 1 ).

Modern technologies like Satellites now provide new methods of data collection which can be used to investigate the ellipsoid theory.

Another theory came from the orbital variations of the first Earth satellites. The theory proposed that observed long periodic orbital variations indicate an additional depression at the south pole accompanied by a bulge of the same degree at the north pole.

The article said it is also contended that the Northern middle latitudes are slightly flattened and the Southern middle latitudes bulged in a similar amount that suggest a slightly pear-shaped Earth and the concept was the subject of much public discussion.

Although there are several theories for Earth's shape Modern geodesy tends to retain the ellipsoid of revolution (oblate) and treats the pear shape as part of the geoid figure. ( 1 )

So its agreed that Earth is not a perfect sphere and more likely an ellipsoid but there are many variations like geoid and Pear.

I never would have know that Earth has an odd shape if I hadn't seen that video because all of the images and videos above, as well as all the ones I've ever seen show Earth as what appears to be a perfect sphere.


I did find a "Pear" reference on a NASA page called "Ask the Space Scientist".

In the Miscellaneous section under "Exactly How Round is the Earth?" it said

"There are also other 'higher-order' shape deviations which make the Earth slightly pear-shaped with a larger Southern hemisphere surface area than in the Northern hemisphere"

I found a site claiming NASA statement in bold above concludes its an egg shape and this confirms the Muslim Quran has the shape of the Earth correct. Some Muslims have cited Quranic verse 79:30 which in Arabic reads " WAL ARDS BAID ZALIKA DOHAHA". Some claim that the origin of the verb Dahaha is found in the word Ud-hiya which means egg of Ostrich so translated to English would be  "the Earth, Moreover hath he extended in egg shape" but some interpret the verse as saying the Earth has an Oblate Ellipsoid shape and others claim that it refers to the Earth being Flat which at the time the Quran was written (609-632 CE) is said to be the prevailing understanding of Earths shape.


Another Pear reference I found was an article by Jos Leys based on a presentation from October 2006 given to an audience of geologists on the historical mathematical approaches to determining the theoretical shape of the Earth by Professor Etienne Ghys. (His home page here)

The article discusses the history of the theoretical shape of Earth from way back when Earth was thought to be flat and covers many mathematicians who have studied this.

One such Mathematician was named Henri Poincare ( 1 )who published an article entitled "Sur l'équilibre d'une masse fluide animée d'un mouvement de rotation" or "on the equilibrium of a fluid mass in rotation" ( 1 , 2 ) who called it "piriforme" (pear shaped) and provided the below drawing   ( 1


Obviously he was just a little bit off but the inaccuracy of the drawing is said to be due to his bad eye sight which effected his ability to draw accurate diagrams but from his formulas the below video was made and shows how angular momentum (Earths rotation) effects the Earths shape. The video Starts out at Earths current shape,becomes an ellipsoid and eventually we get Poincares "pear".

There were a few other models which showed that as Angular Momentum increases the Earth will flatten out.

Below is a video showing McLaurins Flat Earth (left) and Jacobi's Ellipsoidal Earth (right) models,


Nature Publishing Group have an article which talked about the variations in perigee height of Vanguard 1 ( 1 , 2 , 3  ) which launched in 1958 showing a pear shape and also had a few references citing NASA's Goddard Flight Center.



I found the video below covering the launch of Vanguard 1.


Neil deGrasse Tyson also seem pretty confident of its Pear shape and that geologists have misrepresented the Earth to us. 

He said that Earths "pear shapedness" is bigger than the height of Mount Everest above sea level but Astrophysicists don't care much about sea level.

He mentions another mountain in Ecuador which I found is called Chimborazo and while it's not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level its location along the equator or the "equatorial bulge" makes its the farthest point from the Earth's center.  

Mount Everest is pretty big as we all know but I have never really thought about how they measured it and didn't even know they used other methods.

It also had me wondering how they measure sea level.

I found the below video or you can read about it here, here , here and here

Wow........

I did not expect it to be so difficult.

I'm glad that satellites have made it so easy. I feel sorry for the geodetic scientists who had been doing this since around 500 BC .

Here are some of the Gravitational models talked about at the end of the video (provided by NASA's GRACE satellite (1) and ESA's GOCE satellite)


While looking for these pictures and other information I noticed that NASA always refer to theirs as "images".


Other independent sources call them pictures or photos but not NASA.

I found this is because every single one is edited in some way or are what they call a composite image ( 1 , 2 ) so it is no longer a "picture" in a true sense. 

The composites like the one from EPIC are multiple images from different bands as we have discussed but the others between the period of 1972 and 2015 are from Robert Simmon, AKA Mr Blue Marble.

He was the Lead Data Visualizer and Information Designer at Godard Space flight center until 2013. Joshua Stevens now has hos role.

Mr Blue Marbles role was to"make imagery" by stitching together strips of data taken by satellites.


 He Explains the process in the below video

You can also read about Mr Blue Marble herehere and here explaining how he created his images.

He says the hard part is taking the flat map of the Earth’s surface containing months of satellite data and then having to wrap it around a computerizedball.


He then integrates the surface, clouds, and oceans to match people’s expectations of how Earth should look from space using photo shop.

You can see the evolution of "The Blue Marble" from 1972 to 2015 in the images below or can click here

Notice the difference in water and land color and the size of  North America is never the same.

It seems we see the view of Earth showing North America more often.

Mr Blue Marble explains jokingly "I’ve spent the vast majority of my life here, and I’m biased"


Here you can read about how he does this to the full globe but also photo shops volcanoes like one called Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea.

He explains that his goal is not to make an image that shows the Earth as the satellite saw it but is to create an image that the human brain can relate to and understand  by manipulating it to match all the processing that our eyes and brains are doing for us.


Below is another video explaining the technique and providesmore information on DSCOVR.

The below video explains a few more uses for DSCOVR.

Below is another video explaining in even more detail.

You can see the daily gallery he mentioned is provided by DSCOVR  by clicking here.

I made the video below by downloading the images from the site which were taken on March 24th 2016 andcombinedthem to show a full rotation. 


The lady speaking in the first video said that hundreds of pictures were taken of the Earth.

Lets find them.

I performed a few google searches. The results of the searches can be seen by clicking on each below. Have a good look through the image gallery.

Click here for a google search for "Pictures of Earth"

Click here for a google search for "Real picture of earth from space"

Click here for a google search for "NASA earth Images"

Below are the ones I found which match what I have seen as Earth from space.


Did you have a good look through the gallery on the searches?

I've included my screenshots below in case you didn't but I noticed a large percentage were just art or C.G.I. 

The few left over were the composite images we have discussed above.


So from December 1972 to July 2015 or nearly 43 years of space exploration NASA have but one non-composite shot of the Earth in full view.

Knowing this now I can't help but look at every image I see just a little bit closer. 

Understanding that the images are composites and photo shopped to fill in the gaps of data I would expect to find a few anomalies.

The below example is the 2002 Blue Marble which is claimed to be the most realistic image ever provided. You can clearly see the photo shop clone tool has been used to duplicate the clouds.  


The 2015 "EPIC view" is also a composite because its a combination of 3 individual images from different channels but at least its a full image and is not just stitched together with photo shop.

I still think it may be worth examining closer.


Can you see anything wrong with the image? 

Look at the clouds just under the equator on the left hand side. I wouldn't say it's wrong  but I have highlighted the anomaly in the image below.


All I have done to is flip the image 180 degrees and highlight the anomaly. Can you see what is written in the clouds?

What would be the chances of "Sex" appearing in the clouds on the same day NASA takes their second full image of Earth from space?

 Is that just some editors trying to be funny like the animators for Disney cartoons?.

Have you ever noticed some of the odd things that show up in cartoons?



My partner laughs and tells me I'm just seeing what I want to see, like I have a dirty mind or something.

Its possible .......or perhaps its just to entertain the adults who have to watch them and it goes straight over the kids heads unnoticed.


But I couldn't imagine why the Blue Marble from Apollo 17  is refereed to by NASA as an image.

What did they edit?

Well  I found the famous image we see everywhere is not shown in its original orientation.

There is no up or down in space and because of the space crafts orientation the original  actually had the South pole on top. So when its shown with the South pole on the bottom it has obviously been inverted to show what we would recognize as the correct orientation ( 1 2 , 3  video).

We are also very lucky because they almost didn't capture their most iconic, widely distributed image of all time. 

They say you can't see the Earth as a globe unless you get at least twenty thousand miles away from it and only 24 humans have been that far into outer space and because of Apollo 17's trajectory and the time of the year only its crew consisting of Eugene Cernan,, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt and Ron Evans were lucky enough too see it in full. ( 1  , 2  ) 

It goes without saying that they would be extremely busy on the spacecraft so photo sessions were always scheduled events in a highly detailed flight plan.

The film they had was rationed and the crew only had  12 color magazines, all intended for documenting the moon. They weren't supposed to be taking pictures when they snapped the Blue Marble,  apparently they weren't even supposed to be looking out the window. ( 1 )

But can you blame them?  Look at what they saw.

Only 4 images were taken with Earth fully illuminated (AS17-148-22725 through to AS17-148-2278).

From what I can find NASA say that AS17-148-22727  is the one we see everywhere ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) but some are also  AS17-148-22726.  

I would have thought AS17-148-22725 was the one we see because it resembles the color.


Who took the 4 shots?

Unfortunately not one of the crew mentioned taking them.

One report that was made about the Earth came from Cernan who said

"Were not the first to discover this but we would like to confirm, the Earth is Round" ( 1  , 2 ) (full timeline here, found at around 05:22) 


I found the following in the Apollo 17 Technical Debrief: (full debrief found here , Full timeline found here and scroll to the bottom or search for key words)

EVANS-  Photography - Jack, I guess you've taken most of the pictures on the translunar coast.
SCHMITT-  Most of the photography came to GET within a few minutes. It was almost a continuous effort at the beginning of the day and maybe in the middle and at the end with some irregularities - getting a continuous record of a very nice view of the Earth and the weather patterns. We had about three-quarters to two-thirds Earth through most of the translunar coast period. And that should be in the photographic logs on the ground. ...
EVANS-  Orbital science photos - We really didn't have any on translunar coast.
SCHMITT- Nothing was called out. We used about a half a mag on the Earth, maybe more.
EVANS- More than that. We used a full mag before we got to the Moon.  

1 , pdf AS17TECH1, pg 32, 34)


But interestingly they had a lot of detailed comments on subjects like

Earth-shine photography -

"We worked it differently than it is indicated in the experiment checklist. I used Aristotleles and Copernicus starting out with a 1 second and taking two 1-second exposures. As we rotated about every 30 seconds, it ended up a little closer than I thought. We were passing up the target too fast because we'd never get everything. The timing sequence may not be correct. It may not be exactly 30 seconds between each one. We would cycle down the exposure setting to 1 second, 1/2 second, 1/4 second, 1/8 second, and 1/16 second on Aristoteles and Copernicus. We'd leave it on one-sixteenth of a second following Copernicus and switch over to window three and pick up Reiner Gamma and do the same type of sequence. Then we stopped on 1/8-second exposure and carried it out until the end of the film mag."  (Pdf AS17TECH2 pg 30-31)

All Pdfs can be found here

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To Process the images we eventually see NASA's Johnson Space Center scan them using a video camera with a resolution of over 700 lines.

Each frame is digitized as a 24 bit color image at 756 x 486 pixels, producing a file of approximately 1.1 megabytes in Targa format.

The images then received some "color" processing by tweaking representative images by hand  to give us the below. ( 1 ,  )


As you can see the images (22725 , 22726 , 22727, 22728) look nothing like the originals  and the positions in the frame would agree with simply flipping the orientation.

You will find that there are many NASA resources to get a copy but they are very rarely the same.

The Lunar and Planetary Institute says, "Because of all this processing, these catalog images should not be used for research purposes." ( 1

You can read more about Apollo mission image processing methods here.


When the film was processed all 3 men claimed to have taken them. The images have been credited to the whole crew but some reports say its more likely Schmitt took them.


Evans died in 1990 without relinquishing his claim to have taken them

Over forty years later there is still argument between Cernan and Schmitt about who took the Blue Marble Shots.

So still to this day who actually took them is unclear ( 1 , 2 , 3  , 4 , 5 )


I looked closely at the AS17-148-22727 image and found an anomaly.

Below is a screen shot but you can visit the website yourself.

Click here for the link to NASA's  Earth Observatory. Then find the blurb next to the 2002 Blue marble image and click on  AS17-148-22727 which is its official designation by NASA.

This will direct you to a site called "Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth".

Make sure the "Zoom image at cursor" box underneath the image is ticked and hover around.

See if you can find some other things.


So far we have only looked at NASA images but there are several other space agencies.

So lets compare one from NASA to one from the Russian Federal Space Agency known as Roscosmos. ( 1 )


I think you would agree they are very different.

The one on the left is a NASA Blue marble composite from 2002 and the one on the right is a Roscosmos image taken by a weather satellite called Elektro-L ( 1 , 2 ) in 2011.

So which is More accurate?

Well that depends on who you ask.  According to "Mr Blue Marble" the Russian images are not better or worse than NASA images and are just different visualizations of reality based on different data sets.

The Blue Marble uses true color images, combining red, green and blue into a global composite and rendered in a 3D program. It's actually what the eye can see. The Russian satellite, however, is presenting a different view. It may feel more realistic, but it's not. ( 1video )

 

Elektro-L is a weather satellite in geostationary orbit which takes a 121 megapixel image of the Earth in fullat a resolution of 1 kilometer per pixel every 30 minutes in 4K resolution.

The main instrument on board is the Multi-spectral Scanner -Geostationary (MSU-GS) which is a a ten-channel radiometer covering the the visible & near infrared spectral range (VNIR), the thermal infrared band and a microwave band.

MSU-GS has three VNIR spectrum channels , four Microwave/Infrared channels and three Thermal Infrared channels. ( 1 )

Because an infrared image is substituted for a red one, color images composed of infrared, green, and blue causes Elektro-L frames to look unusual.

What should be green in the images appears orange. This is because chlorophyll, the green pigment in plant life, is strongly reflective in near-infrared wavelengths ( 1 ).


Below is a composite animation produced with Elektro-L data taken on October 6th 2011 .

The source was the Russian Federal Space Agencies Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring (NTs OMZ) and I simply took a screen recording.

The animations from NTs OMZ only show a single day.

There are a few videos from Elektro-L on YouTube but I found many were from James Tyrwhitt-Drake, a graduate student at the University of Victoria who puts together multiple days and performs other editing.

Tyrwhitt-Drake says

"The images were re-sized by 50 percent, misalignment's between frames were manually corrected, and image artifacts that occurred when the camera was facing towards the sun were partially corrected".

 "The images were interpolated by a factor of 20 to create a smooth animation."

It might seem odd that the video below does not show city lights. However, this is perfectly normal as the reflection of sunlight from the Earth  is much brighter than the city lights so the images would suffer from overexposure if the camera was configured to picked them up. ( 1  , 2 ).

In the original images the plants look red but Tyrwhitt-Drake edits them so they look green as we would expect.

"To make plants appear green requires processing in Photoshop"

Another video is below or you can view all the videos he has produced on his YouTube Channel.

The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) also has Earth Observation Satellites.

Below is an Image from JAXA's image archives showing Australia taken by Geostationary satellite Himawari.

The Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) instrument carried by both Himawari-8 and  9 ( 1 ) records more data than any previous geostationary meteorological satellites.

It has 16 channels, including three visible wavelength bands (red, green and blue) to create ‘true-color’ images of the Earth with a resolution up to 500m and can provide full disk observations every 10 mins. Using these observation bands enables the world's first "color image" from a geostationary satellite ( 1 , 2  ).


There were actually very few images In JAXA's archive, It was the only one i could find that was in color as you can see from the search here.

The below image was found on Wikipedia which is said to be the first taken by Himawari-8 on January 25th 2015.


I couldn't find any "true color" images from NOAA satellites and Information site but I did manage to find some animations at the Himawari-8 animation library.

The animations only show one day so I have downloaded individual files from March 16th to 19th and combined them into one video which can be seen below.

This should then provide a good comparison to Roscosmos animations. 


 The European Space Agency (ESA) has geostationary meteorological satellites called Meteosats.

Meteosat-1 was launched in 1977 and Meteosat-7 or the last of "the fist generation" was launched in 1997.

Meteosat 1-6 are now retired but Meteosat-7 still provides the primary imagery for the Indian Ocean.

Meteosat-7's primary instrument is the Meteosat Visible and Infrared Imager (MVIRI) which is a high resolution radiometer with three spectral bands of Visible, Water vapor and Thermal Infrared.

Meteosat-8 to 11 or "the second generation" were launched between 2002 and 2015.

Meteosat 8-10 are all located over Africa with Meteosat-10 being the main full Earth imagery service.

Generation two's Meteosat primary instruments are the Spinning Enhanced Visible And Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) which has twelve spectral channels, as opposed to three on the first generation system. Eight of the channels are in the thermal infrared. One of the channels is called the High Resolution Visible (HRV) channel, and has a sampling distance at nadir of 1 km, as opposed to the 3 km resolution of the other visible channels.

1 ,  2 ,  3 , 4 , , 6 )

The image Gallery for Meteosat can be seen here.

The Below Image is an artificially-colored visible channel full-disc Earth image released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on February 8th 2002 taken by Meteosat-2. 


The Below Image was the first full disk taken by Meteosat-10 on August 7th 2012


The Below Image was taken by Meteosat-10 on April 22nd 2015


The Below Image was the first taken by Meteosat-11 in 2015


The below video shows a time lapse from Solstice to Equinox (3 months of images) taken by Meteosat-8 

The Below Video shows the full disk with weather from September 2012

The below video the shadow of the Moon during a Solar eclipse on November 3rd 2013 captured by Meteosat-10

You can read more information on the rare event here.

Other videos can be seen on EUMETSAT's Channel

There are other agencies but below is a comparison of the 4 we have covered.

All theimages are composites and all are completely different.


The Below Video is a quick review of the full Earth Animations / Videos we have seen from each agency showing weather and or rotation.


So if the images provided by the agencies are all different can we say for certain which one is representing Earth correctly?

What does the Earth look like from Space?

 Maybe at this stage I'll settle for just knowing what the land masses actually look like.

The original Blue Marble shows us very little so lets look at a map for an idea.


 Most of us will be familiar with the below mapwhich is known as the Mercator Projection.


During my research I found out that the Mercator Map has a few issues.


Below are some land size comparisons I performed at a site called thetruesize.com.

You can do your own by clicking here.

Or try a site called Map fight which is a bit more user friendly by clicking here.


So as you can see the Mercator map is not showing the correct  land sizes.

Look how Greenland appears to be roughly the same size as Africa when in reality it is 14 times smaller.


The closer the land mass is to the poles the greater the distortion as can be seen below on the Tissot's indicatrix of the Mercator projection.


Not only are the sizes distorted but so is the actual shape and even the location.

To see just how much distortion there is Click here and try the Google Maps Mercator Puzzle.


The video below shows several examples.

But I think the next video explains it best.

So it is argued that the Gall-Peters projection has greater accuracy and  providessocial equility.


However,

Peters's choice of 45° N/S for the standard parallels means that the regions displayed with highest accuracy include Europe and the US but not the tropics.

Peters's original description of the projection for his map contained a geometric error that when taken literally implies standard parallels of 46°02′ N/S although the text accompanying the description made it clear that he had intended the standard parallels to be 45° N/S.

Again the Tissot's indicatrix below shows distortion on his projection as places appear stretched  horizontally near the poles and vertically near the Equator.


We have only looked at 2 and there are hundreds of different map projections but all have distortion. They are designed and used for specific purposes.

Distortion is inherent due to the fact that transposing a globe onto a flat map creates many problems as explained here and here.

A list of the different projections and their use can be seen here

The Peters projection started a lot of controversy based around the known social implications of making a country appear larger or smaller than it really is.

In response the American Cartographic Association attempted to educate the public about map distortion and in 1989-1990 seven North American geographic organizations rejected all rectangular world maps, a category that includes both the Mercator and the Gall–Peters projections ( 1 )

We can't rely on any map for a true representation of  land sizes or distribution and some argue if they are even correctly orientated.


At this point I'm left wondering if I will ever know what our home really looks like?

I now know the maps cant be trusted.

I also feel there are very few images of Earth from space considering we have been going there for around 50 years and only one of those images is an actual picture taken by NASA in 1972.

But I also know it was taken on the very last moon mission which all 3 Astronauts claim to have taken and has been flipped over to "match our expectations" as well as "color corrected" and enhanced.

I also know that NASA, who is the leading agency in space exploration released their first image from spacethat isn't a composite created in photo shop by a visual designer in almost 43 years and it has a natural cloud formation spelling "sex".

The different agencies are showing us different representations of Earth, all have been highly edited and we have Mr Blue Marble claiming his are the most realistic even though he tells us they are simply photo shop composites which he designed to look  how we would expect Earth to look from space even though without actually ever seeing it with our own eyes we can only base that expectation on what they have provided us with.

I just wish one of the agencies would take a simple picture and provide it to the public as is.

I also cant forget there is an Astrophysicist saying our home is pear shaped and several theories still exist about Earth shape even though the satellites we now use to measure it are said to be accurate to within a few millimeters and all the while every image they have provide would lead me to believe the Earth is a perfect sphere.

We are also told by a Planetary Institute that we cant use images with that amount of processing for research purposes.

So that eliminates all but one of them.

Even though we don't know who took it and know its upside down at least we can look at the 1972 Blue Marble shown below (AS17-148-22727) as a true picture .


Right?

Well I ran the image through a few different types of image tests.


As can be seen above the Error Level Analysis (ELA) showed Rainbowing in the blackness of space. Adobe Products like Phot0 shop generate large amounts of Rainbowing when saving an image. ( 1  , 2 )

Thee Globe itself is also showing heavy levels of reds and blues in places. The level around the edge of the disk also seems inconstant (greater on the left hand side). This could be a result of compression but may indicate work in Photo shop.

The other layers also show some activity around the edge of the disk.

I ran the Image through a program called JPEG Snoop which runs a variety of tests to check for signs of image editing. The result, Photoshop IRB was detected and based on EXIF metadata and compression characteristics make it a Class-1 edited or processed image. 

A lot of the EXIF data seems to be missing so to make sure I ran the image through another online EXIF Viewer which came back with a result showing Photo Shop 6.0 encoding.

Just to be safe I ran the image through yet another online forensic tool  which showed the same ELA result and showed time of file modification was June 20th 2002.

The image could have just been saved or compressed in Photo shop so this doesn't nessisarily mean photo editing.


By now we know the difference between a picture and an image but can we tell the difference between those and a drawing or painting?

Look at the below and see if you can tell which of these are pictures, drawings or paintings.


Are they pictures, drawings or paintings?

There are more example below.


Which ones are pictures, drawings or paintings?

Would you be surprised if they were all paintings or drawings?

Well they are. ( 1 , 2 , 3 )


The first 3 may have been easy but the one of Morgan Freeman is amazingly detailed.

The black and white sketches are incredible as well. 

It just goes to show that a skilled artist or editor can make anything appear real. 


Most of us are aware that you can never trust a picture, especially in the age we live in.  

Photo shop is everywhere, every image we see in a magazine has been touched up, people even edit their selfies before posting them on Facebook and we don't even need a computer anymore, it can be done straight from your phone with a free app.

But many are unaware that the ability to manipulate a photo has been around for a long time.

The first manipulated photo dates back to the 1860's as seen below which is an iconic portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

It is actually a composite of Lincoln’s head and the Southern politician John Calhoun’s body. ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 )


Obviously photo shop wasn't used because it wasn't around then.

 Mr Blue Marble's job is much easier today but techniques like retouching with ink or paint, airbrushing, or even scratching Polaroids during developing have been used to tamper with pictures for almost as long as we have had the ability to take them.

Photo manipulation has been found on many historic pictures as can be seen below or click here.


Now I'm certainly not an expert on photo forensics, image enhancement or even very good on photo shop but I wanted to have a closer look at the images and videos/animations we have looked at.


The video below is an analysis I performed on the 1972 Blue Marble.

So Is it Google Earth or the Blue Marble that is incorrect?

We use Google Earth for navigation don't we?

Now lets have a close look at the Earth 24 hr rotation video from Galileo in 1990.

Could you see any clouds moving?

A full 24 hour period and no cloud formation changes?

There were several other Galileo animations available here so lets look at them all

So as you can see I wasn't exaggerating about not being very good.

So I wondered if there were other people who had looked at the images.

I found the below video from "TheBikerscout" who claims to be a professional photographer and has used Photo shop for 15 years.

He examines the 2015 "EPIC view" Of Earth 

So there are quite a few things wrong with the EPIC image.

I thought it was strange to have a 4 Megapixel camera fitted to a satellite that is 1 million miles away from Earth especially when Roscosmos has Elektro-L fitted with a 121 megapixel camera. But they still manage very good resolution.



He also had the video below examining the EPIC moon transit.


Did he just say what i thought I heard him say?

After looking at all of the images, knowing that they are all completely different and how NASA in particular go about creating them I agree that the photography is deceiving,  yes they are sloppy and they cooouulldd  possibly be hiding something.......

I've heard quite a few people say we didn't go to the moon

But did he just say

"Is the Earth Flat?????"

Better Check That Out Again 


Ummmm......... he did just say "Is the Earth Flat".


Come on.....I can entertain that NASA never went to the Moon but thinking the Earth is flat seems like a big leap to make.


Just because the images NASA are providing us with are possibly fake how would that lead anyone to  think they are hiding the Earths shape from us?

We all Know its a globe......


I think  that a highly educated, highly qualified and very popular Physicist named Brian Cox can clear this up for him in the short video clip below.

Well that wasn't quite what I had hoped for but he is still correct because they did go to space, they turned around and they took a picture.



With what we know about it can we rely on that image?

By now we know how easy it is to fake an image. The below Image is of the band Rammstein on the Moon.



OK we will give NASA the benefit of the doubt but the TheBikerScout also mentioned in the Transit analysis video that NASA have never gone past low Earth orbit.....

Why would he say that?

The Below video shows footage of the Apollo 11 astronauts on the way to the Moon so they must have gone further than low Earth Orbit......


Hmm interesting.......

The Video not only brings the Blue Marble Image into question but also  many other things. 

Did you see the demeanor and expressions from the Apollo 11 astronauts during their press conference?

Neil Armstrong's 25th anniversary speech was very odd.

The Full documentary is called "A funny thing happened on the way to the moon" and can be seen here

 


As Dr Cox points out, for many (myself included) seeing is believing.

His other comment alsogot me thinking...........

How do I know its a globe?

Is it  simply because someone told me? 

How Do YOU Know Its A Globe?

Is it  simply because someone told you? 


We were taught the Earth is a globe from a very early age and I doubt any of us wold even question it.

Why would we?


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